1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a printed circuit board and an apparatus for manufacturing the same; and, more particularly, to a method for manufacturing a printed circuit board and an apparatus for manufacturing the same to correct exposure position data of an exposing process for forming a pad according to position information of a contact hole.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printed circuit board has been developed from a single layer structure to a multilayer structure with miniaturization of an electronic appliance. The multi-layered printed circuit board includes alternately arranged circuit layer and insulating layer. Herein, the circuit layer includes circuit patterns and pads electrically connected to the circuit patterns. At this time, the pads arranged on each of the insulating layers electrically connect the circuit patterns arranged on each of the insulating layers by being arranged on contact holes passing through the insulating layers.
Herein, the pad can be formed by forming a photosensitive pattern with a predetermined pattern through an exposing process and by etching a metal according to the photosensitive pattern or through a plating process.
The exposing process includes a contact exposing process and a contactless exposing process. At this time, the contact exposing process is an exposing process using a mask. Meanwhile, in the contactless exposing process, light is irradiated to a desired region through image data in design without an additional mask. Therefore, the contactless exposing process is capable of reducing a cost and simplifying a process in comparison with the contact exposing process.
However, there may be a difference between a shape of a substrate in design and that of an actual substrate due to deformation of the substrate during the process. This leads to deterioration in reliability of interlayer connection because the pad may be not formed on the desired region, that is, the contact hole when the pad is formed through the contactless exposing process.
Therefore, to improve the degree of matching in the exposing process, the process of manufacturing the printed circuit board includes steps of: forming a reference point on an edge of the printed circuit board, recognizing a position of the reference point, and then correcting image data in design according to the recognized information. However, only the information of the reference point is insufficient to entirely reflect complex and non-linear partial deformation of the substrate generated during the process of manufacturing the printed circuit board, and therefore it is difficult to completely secure the reliability of the interlayer connection.
Further, to secure the reliability of the interlayer connection, the pad was designed to maintain more than a predetermined size, but this reduces the degree of freedom in design. Consequently, there was a limit to integration and miniaturization of the printed circuit board.